If you don't braid your hair, you're losing your heritage?

I’ve been using the word “crazy” a little too often here. So I present the following without comment.

“Did I mention that I’ve been braiding Stinkapee’s hair since she was two years old? When she was younger there was lots of squirming and upset, so I cut it short and waited. I started braiding again when she was about three and a half. Important to me definitely. The transmission of culture through our hair. If Black people both men and wimmin don’t know how to physically love our hair through developing resistance knowledge of what it means to handle it, manipulate it, design it, weave it, then we are more easy prey to a dominant white culture and by extension also vulnerable to any people of colour cultures where long limp hair is upheld as evidence of beauty.” – link

I will say this – it’s a good thing the child known only as “Stinkapee” is being raised free from the dominant culture. I mean it wouldn’t suck if she tried to emulate the society around her. Fortunately, she is safe from that.

Oh wait, she isn’t.

“But last December, a few short days before her birthday and birthday party she cut off large chunks of her hair. She wanted to have a style more closely resembling those of the dyke wimmin in our household, whose hair I had been clipping, cutting and colouring.” – link

Hey, if little Stinkapee wants to look like the dykes I say go for it… I am just not sure how you find a way to blame emulation on the patriarchy then. No problem though… I am sure she’ll grow up to a well rounded life of constant therapy. I mean, she has a great role model…